full of chivalry, and has charming manners. It doesn't in the least matter what you wear. Heaps of love.

Marian.

Marian.

It was this last reflection that gave Stella courage to ring the bell. She had never been in the Youngs' house before. She had vaguely known that it was in a very quiet square, with a garden in the middle, quite near everything that mattered, and quite far away from everything that didn't. It was the kind of house that looks as if no one was in it unless they were giving a party. The interior was high, narrow, and box-like. A great deal of money had been unpretentiously spent on it, with a certain amount of good-humored, ordinary taste.

The drawing-room ran the whole length of the house, and was pink and gray, because the Youngs knew that pink and gray go well together, just as blue and gold do, only that blue fades.

The chairs were very comfortable, the little tables had the right kind of ornaments, the pictures were a harmless, unenlightening addition to the gray-satin walls.

The books that lay about were novels. They were often a little improper, but never seriously so, and they always ended in people getting what they wanted legally.

It was a clean, comfortable, fresh room and nothing was ever out of place in it.

Marian was sitting under a high vase of pink canterbury-bells; by some happy chance her dress was the same pale pink as the bells. She looked, with her hands in her lap, her throat lifted, and the sun on her hair, like a flower of the same family. Her manner was a charming mixture of ease and diffidence.

Stella was late, and Lady Verny and Julian had arrived before her.

Lady Verny was like her son. She was very tall and graceful, and carried herself as if she had never had to stoop. Her eyes had the steady, frosty blueness of Julian's, with lightly chiseled edges; her lips were ironic, curved, and a little thin.

She had piles of white hair drawn back over her forehead. When Marian introduced her to Stella, she rose and turned away from the tea-table.

"I hope you will come and talk to me a little," she said in a clear, musical voice. "We can leave Julian and Marian to themselves."

Lady Verny leaned back in the chair 

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